"Just images, just images," murmurs the narrator of Jonas Mekas’ new 80 minute film Out-takes from the Life of a Happy Man (2012).

A naked doll with long synthetic hair greets the visitor to this inspired exhibition, which explores "the idea of opening up and exposing a living body".

"When I was offended in the Nazi era, I couldn’t respond," the late sculptor Hans Josephsohn explained in 2001. "Whenever a Hitler Youth leader insulted me, I wasn’t able to hit him."

“You are here to serve your masters.” This is a line from the S&M classic Story of O (1954), a tale about a career woman who succumbs to sexual slavery in a secluded château at the behest of her lover, René.

This exhibition borrows its title from a 2001 installation by RCA alumna Tracey Emin, which, unsurprisingly, is categorized in the Personal Expression section.

This exhibition is exceptional for many reasons. To collect so many wonderful works in the aftermath of the 2010 earthquake is a feat. Moreover, the artists do not belong to the Haitian elite, trained in European art schools, but to the country's urban and rural poor.

A photograph of Matisse working in his studio as an elderly man inspired the young American conceptual artist Mel Bochner to create Theory of Painting (1970). It was not the woman that Matisse was painting on the canvas that caught Bochner’s attention, however, but the newspapers spread under his feet.  

"The history of colonialism is that of a process of generalised zombification of mankind," wrote Haitian intellectual and poet René Depestre.

A woman exhales a cloud of faint colour. Her expression is caught in profile, one feeble hand propping up her chin. She stares into the cloud as though she could divine her future there. While the colours are chimeric – pink, and yellow, and lilac – her face is impassive, even hard. She seems almost bored by her own magical power.

"This is my art," Mark Humphrey announces in a film that accompanies his new exhibition of fashion, furniture, sculpture, architecture, and interior design.